Here’s what I’m hearing from customers: AI is moving faster than their infrastructure can support. Data strategies that worked 18 months ago don’t work today. And the skills gap is real.
Our partners are helping customers close these gaps every single day.
At this year’s Partner Summit, we showed up with what you need to keep winning: innovation that removes customer barriers, and a program that rewards you for delivering what customers need—AI-ready infrastructure, future-proofed workplaces, and digital resilience
Partner Summit has always been about our partners, which makes it the perfect moment to unveil innovation when we have thousands of partners in one room who can immediately put it to work. Here’s what we announced.
AI at the Edge Is Here
We’re introducing our Edge Compute portfolio, and this isn’t just another product launch. This is about enabling customers in retail, manufacturing, and branch offices to run AI workloads where they need them most—at the edge. Think about a retailer who needs real-time inventory insights during peak shopping hours, or a manufacturer running predictive maintenance on the factory floor. They can’t wait for data to travel to the cloud and back. They need compute power right there, right now.
And here’s the thing: this edge compute appliance will eventually extend to all the other functions necessary for networking: security, connectivity, storage. We’re building a complete end-to-end solution that provides the value our customers need.
The Network That Powers the AI Enterprise
At Cisco Live earlier this year, we introduced our AI-ready secure network architecture, designed specifically for modern enterprises. Now, at Partner Summit, we are demonstrating our commitment to turning that vision into reality—delivering on our promises and advancing innovation. Our latest enhancements to the networking portfolio—including unified network visibility through Meraki Dashboard, automation toolkits that enable new branch deployments in minutes, and new hardware purpose-built for AI workloads—provide enterprise network operators with the operational simplicity, robust security, and scalability they need to support the infrastructure for growing AI demands. By leveraging these advancements, partners can confidently help customers evolve their networks for the AI era, creating new value and driving business growth.
These solutions are not just concepts—they are real, tangible advancements that address the immediate needs of our customers today.
Connected Intelligence for Collaboration
Building on our WebexOne momentum, Cisco unveiled new solutions to enable Connected Intelligence across humans and AI, including unlocking workforce productivity with AI Agents for the Webex Suite; improving customer experiences with AI Agents and AI Quality Management; ensuring future-proofed workplaces with the new RoomOS 26; and securing, managing, and scaling with AI Canvas for collaboration. These innovations demonstrate Cisco’s commitment to partners and customers in fostering dynamic collaboration between people and AI agents in the workplace.
Security Built for MSPs
For our managed service provider partners, we’re launching Cisco Security Cloud Control for MSPs. It delivers managed hybrid mesh firewall services from a single AI-powered platform, with support for managing multiple customers. If you’re an MSP trying to scale your security practice, this changes the game.
Customer Experience Reimagined
We’re launching Cisco IQ, a single, unified, AI-powered interface that revolutionizes the entire customer journey—from planning and design to implementation, onboarding, ongoing optimization, operations, and transformation. Cisco IQ provides the ultimate digital experience, designed to accelerate time-to-value, boost resiliency, and deliver unparalleled simplicity, elevating support and services from reactive fixes to strategic, predictive powerhouses.
A Partner Program Built With You, For You
In the AI era, innovation alone is not enough. We need to modernize how we approach our deep commitment to our partner community to solve future customer challenges.
Since we announced the Cisco 360 Partner Program at last year’s Partner Summit, we’ve designed the program with you. We didn’t just ask for your input. We listened through workshops, meetings, regional forums and many WebEx call and acted on what you shared as requirements for a successful program.
The Cisco 360 Partner Program isn’t a refresh of the old way of doing business. It’s a complete reimagining built around three core principles:
- Lifecycle value creation: Rewarding you for the long-term relationships you build with customers, not just the initial sale.
- Managed services and software adoption: Recognizing where the market is going and compensating you accordingly.
- Showcasing ecosystem power: Making it clear to customers that partnering with Cisco means accessing an unmatched network of expertise and innovation.
We’re introducing new incentives that reward partners. Next-generation specializations that help you differentiate in the market. Marketing funds to support your transition. This is about your profitability and durable growth.
We’re releasing the all-new Cisco AI Infrastructure Specialist Certification within the CCNP Data Center track. This isn’t just another cert. It helps you build and validate skills on deploying, migrating, and operating AI solutions on Cisco data center infrastructure.
The Bottom Line
Here’s what I want you to take away from this:
The innovation is real. We’re delivering edge computing, networking advances, security solutions, and customer experience tools that address what your customers need today and tomorrow.
The program is designed with you. The Cisco 360 Partner Program was co-created through unprecedented partner input. It rewards how you actually do business in the AI era.
The economics work. With our new incentive structures, we’re making it financially viable to lead with innovation.
The AI era is here. Our mutual customers are looking for partners who can help them navigate it. Cisco is investing in making sure you’re equipped, with technology, with business models, with training, and with support, to be that partner.
There’s never been a better time to partner with Cisco. And we’re backing it up with real innovation, real program changes.
Let’s build this future together.
Learn about all of the key announcements and launches from Cisco Partner Summit 2025
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